Archive for March, 2004

You guys are awesome.  I knew I’d get some thoughtful feedback on the blogging issue.  Thanks, also, for the information on Philly.

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I signed up for a new blogring:  People Piss Me Off.  Why?  Because they do.  Well, it’s the truth.  I think that’s from my lack of understanding people.  I also signed up for it because it cracked me up.

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I’m registering for my fall classes today.  I’ve finally made it to the top of the registering list…which means I get to register before all of those junior, sophomore, and freshmen peons.  Heh.

Really what it means is that I get to get into the classes I want and not be waitlisted because someone who has more time than me is in the class.  That’s always nice.

I’m signing up for a class in rhetoric: language of struggle and another seminar class in linguistics.  In addition, I’ll be taking my foreign language requirement and my second to last class for my geology minor:  Planetary Geology.

I’m actually looking forward to it.  I don’t have that senioritis thing, yet, although I’ll be a three semester senior by the time I graduate next spring.  I’m still excited by school.

Part of it is, I think, that I feel I’ve found my calling.  I know what speaks to me.  I know what it is that I want to do…well, at least what I want to study.

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I’m bored with my job.  There are two very distinct reasons for this:  one, my boss is taking responsibilities away from me and two, I know this isn’t what I’ll be doing with my life.

I’m bothered that my boss is taking things away.  I’m the last person left over from the previous boss.  The new one has either fired or gotten people transferred out of this department and I’m the last one from the old “regime.”  When she takes responsibilities away from me, especiallys ones I enjoy, then I think I’m next on the list.  While I’m ok with that, I need this job until I graduate.  After graduation, I’ll be going into graduate school and can get a job with the university.  For now, though, I need this job and I can’t afford to have her push me out.

So, then, when I don’t have the same workload to do, I get bored which leads me to dreaming about my future in linguistics.  That makes me not want to be here even more.

To blog or not to blog…

I was talking to a friend about blogging and asked him if he had a blog.  He said that he saw it as a pretentious way of people saying nonsense just to seem self-important.  He then said to me, “Oops…were you going to send me a link of your blog?  I’m guessing you have one and that’s where this is going.”

Well, I was asking because I wanted to know if he had one and because I would have liked to have read his views on the world around him.

It’s gotten me thinking, though.  Do I blog to be noticed?  Do I blog to be self-important or pretentious or to just talk?

I rarely blog if I don’t have anything to say (which is why there are often large spaces of time between entries…I don’t have much new thought to impart on the world).  Heh.

I think of this as a release, though.  It’s a place where I can spout off about the injustices or changes of the world as I see them and be ok doing that.  I don’t need positive feedback for that but I enjoy ANY feedback on that.  I want to hear what other people are thinking outside of my little circle.

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Back to school this week.  I like going back to school…it’s the back to work part that I’m not overly excited about.

Blah.

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I’m leaving for Philadelphia on Saturday.  I’ll be there for 5 days and I’m pretty excited.  It’s a business trip so there will be some time for sight-seeing (well, I’ll make time).  I’ve been there, when I was about 6 weeks old, but don’t, of course, remember any of it.  I can’t wait to go to a museum, to see historic sites that I’ve only read about in books, and to just experience a different environment than my own.  I’m really looking forward to this.

So, if any of you are from there and have any sites that you think I *should* see, let me know.  If you’d like to have lunch together, I’m always up for that, as well.  

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Have a wonderful Monday y’all.

I’m on vacation this week.  It’s spring break at school so I took the week off from work, as well.  That means that I don’t get on my computer as much.  Mostly because I want to be doing things other than what I do day in and day out for work…computers.

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I have a classmate who is a few years older than I am.  We are, easily, the two oldest people in my linguistics class.  She is an amazing woman who has a lot of knowledge that she doesn’t really share.

Why doesn’t she?  She has what is called “chemo-brain”.  She was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago and underwent chemo.  She also went through trials to determine what effects chemo has on the brain and body (besides its obvious effects on cancer).

Chemotherapy is poison.  It kills cancerous cells but it also kills other cells that we need.  This study determined that a loss of memory and simple motor functions occurs when a patient undergoes a series of chemo.

My classmate has told me that she has a lot to contribute but by the time it gets from her brain to her mouth, we’ve moved on.  She also says that sometimes the words don’t come out right.  She’s thinking about what needs to be said but that isn’t what comes out of her mouth.

It has affected her self-esteem.  She told me that before the chemo, she could do anything.  Her papers were clear and well-written.  She was able to contribute to the classroom discussions.

She said that it’s even hard to get dressed sometimes.  She’s in the bedroom getting ready and forgets what she was going to do.

Chemo-brain.

It hurts my heart to even think about this.  People are dealing with this horrendous disease and then the one cure that they count on immobilizes parts of their lives.

On one hand, you’re going to live.  On the other, you’re losing a basic part of yourself.

I can’t even begin to imagine what that is like.

le tramp, I tried to find more information on actress but this is all I came up with:

I agree with you on that, though.  Why are there gender-specific words when they aren’t really needed.  All I can say to that is that this came out of the 18th century and there may have been a reason back then but I can’t find one now.

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So, last night’s class was actually pretty dull (relatively).  What we did talk about was how direct Americans can be (and many other native English speakers) because of our language and how that translates into other cultures.  We have a student from Japan and a student from Switzerland in our class.  They said that our directness can often be off-putting and seem incredibly rude.

The Japanese woman, especially, said that there are things that we say that she just finds over the top.  In other cases, she’s not sure what we mean.  While we’re being direct, many other cultures are used to reading the nuances of a person’s speech to determine what is really being said and so she said that she will be trying to read all of the other signs and it can be confusing.

For instance, she used this as an example:  “I’m having a party on Saturday.  You can come if you want.”  To her, that meant that the person inviting her didn’t really want her to come.  They were just saying something to be polite (and this is considered a negative politeness).  She said that she would find this rude.  She said that if they didn’t want her to come, they shouldn’t say anything at all.  She said that she realizes that to Americans, though, this is a way for people to not feel obligated to go if they don’t want to but that the option to go is there if they choose.  She said that it’s very confusing.

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The same young woman that was commenting on Monday about women’s roles and the feminist influence in language spoke up again last night.

We were talking about conversation between men and women (along with race) and we were talking about how new relationships converse with one another.  This was the conversation:

Woman:  That movie, Passion, is playing tonight.  You wanna go?
Man:  Ok.  Fine.

Now, she said that what girls do is tell a man that they want to go, then tell the man he has to go with them.  She said that ALL GIRLS do this.  They demand a man to do what they want.

I turned around and shook my head.  I said, “No.  All WOMEN do not do that.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “Right, branwyn.  You may not but all girls that I know do.”

So, this bothers me on two levels.  Number one, she’s generalizing about women (she calls all women “girls”) and lumping women into one small lump.  Number two, she’s setting women up to be labeled as people who do not believe in communication but believe in getting their way no matter what the cost.

The entire conversation bothered me.  Where is the compromise, the conversation, the discussion in this kind of discourse?  Have we taught young women to go over the top and beyond what the women before me fought for?  Have they missed that step in the middle where there is actual discourse and not a demand?

It bothered me.  It bothers me still.